Going for a cosmetic surgery of the face may truly lead to a younger look according to researchers from the University of Toronto. Overall, patients looked an average of about 9 years younger than their chronological age after extensive facial surgery, in the opinion of raters who compared before-and-after pictures.
The more procedures a patient had, the greater the difference between estimates of their age before and after surgery, according to the results of the study published in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery. The effect was “unrelated to the preoperative age of a patient and unaffected by other variables that we investigated,” the study's authors wrote. Some plastic surgeons “tend to use the terms more youthful and more refreshed, but precise quantification of these attributes has remained elusive,” the authors added.
Dr. Julius Few, founder of the Few Institute for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in Chicago, said the report confirms what he has seen with his own practice. “I believe it is a study that adds objective confirmation to what was already known to be associated with facial rejuvenation surgery,” Few said.
In the study, the researchers used before-and-after photos of 60 patients who had undergone facial cosmetic surgery. All the patients were about 60 years old, and all but six were women. Twenty two patients had a face and neck lift, 17 had a face/neck lift plus an eyelid lift and 22 had a face/neck lift, eyelid lift and a forehead lift. One of the physicians, Dr. Peter A. Adamson, had operated on all the patients.
The researchers showed patient photos to a group of 40 first-year medical students, asking them to estimate the patients' ages before surgery and the perceived change in age after surgery. After averaging the raters' responses, the researchers found that patients who had one surgery, the face and neck lift, looked 5.7 years younger, patients who had two procedures looked 7.5 years younger and after three surgeries, patients looked 8.4 years younger.
“Our results show a modest but significant reduction in perceived age after aesthetic facial surgery,” the co-authors wrote. “Although motivations for aesthetic surgery may vary, a prevailing concept includes the desire to achieve a more youthful appearance while maintaining one's unique attributes and identifying characteristics. Given these expectations, a mean 7.2-year reduction in perceived age is indeed consistent with this goal.”
But Dr. Garry Brody, professor of plastic surgery at the University of Southern California, said it's still important for a patients to take a realistic approach to how successful their surgery will be and to get surgery for the right reasons. “Inappropriate motivation and unrealistic expectations will spoil any such surgery,” Brody warned.
Delirium linked to tripled dementia risk in older adults, Australian study finds